


Felicity Smoak and the Totally Unfair, Very Bad, Sucky, but Maybe Not-So-Awful Day

by Meilan_Firaga



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Assassins & Hitmen, Bad Days, DeathSmoak, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 21:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15204005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: Felicity Smoak is not having a good day. She woke up with plans, those plans went up in a spectacular plume of smoke, and then she came home determined to veg out and feel sorry for herself only to find a buff, growly Australian hanging out in her living room with a rifle.





	Felicity Smoak and the Totally Unfair, Very Bad, Sucky, but Maybe Not-So-Awful Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cwmod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cwmod/gifts).



> I went looking for AU prompts to use for this fic and came across this one from <http://frenchkey.tumblr.com/post/113716446746/assassin-aus>:
> 
> ‘All my intel said you’re not meant to be back until next week and I’m sitting here using your flat as a sniper nest to kill a bad guy. This is awkward.’ AU
> 
> It stuck. :D

Felicity stopped just outside the door to her apartment, the handle of her rolling suitcase clutched in one hand and a paper bag full of groceries tucked into her elbow. Leaning forward ever so slightly, she thunked her head against the wooden door, squeezing her eyes shut in the process. On her lifelong list of bad days, this one was quickly climbing toward the top. The suitcase that she’d just dragged up the stairs--because _of course_ there wasn’t an elevator--to her fourth floor apartment was full of bathing suits, sundresses, and flip flops. She’d packed everything she could imagine needing for the Caribbean vacation she was supposed to be on a plane to at that very moment. She had even undergone the thoroughly less than pleasant experience of having an IUD inserted so she could surprise her boyfriend on vacation with the option of leaving the condoms in the box for a change. They’d been together for over a year and he was taking her on an island vacation, she’d reasoned. It was worth it.

And then his other girlfriend showed up at the airport, also bearing a suitcase.

Her forehead thumped against the door again while she fumbled for her keys. The bleach blonde that had greeted them was tall, built like a model, and either had perfect vision or could put in contacts without a forty-five minute fight with her eyeballs in the mornings. So, after making a very ugly public scene, Felicity had walked away with an internal vow to utterly decimate Jake’s credit score before he made it back to the States. If she hadn’t left her beloved laptop at home (the sacrifices she’d made for him!) she would have gotten started right away while she was crying into a caramel macchiato in her favorite coffee shop. As it was, she’d camped at It’s a Frappe! until she had her emotions under control without the aid of any tech beyond her phone. Then she’d chucked her paper cup, squared her shoulders, and hit the grocery. She had a week off of work and could see a bright future of days in front of screens in her pjs on the horizon. After a bit of wallow time she’d be right as rain.

She dragged herself through the door into her kitchen like she was coming home after months away. Her keys were tossed in the general direction of the kitchen table, and judging from the wild clatter of noise they’d skidded right off the far side of it into the chair. She launched the flip flops from her feet in different directions, paying no heed to where they landed, and rolled the suitcase toward her bedroom at the back of the apartment while she kicked the door closed behind her. Finally, she shuffled past the archway between the kitchen and her cosy little living room with the wide floor to ceiling windows and the strange man sprawled on the floor with a massive rifle to drop the groceries on the counter.

Wait a minute.

Closing her eyes, Felicity braced her hands against the counter and took a deep breath in. It had been a very stressful morning. Her mind could easily be creating strange things in her peripheral vision. Brains did that kind of nonsense sometimes. She was going to back up and look back through that arch and see nothing but her cheerful living room with its sunny yellow couch and cushy floral chair. Her coffee table wouldn’t be shoved up against the couch to make room for an actual human to stretch out on the pastel rainbow rug with a deadly firearm aimed out the window between her pretty lace curtains. With a nod to reassure herself she forced her eyes open, pushed off from the counter, and took two steps backwards. Nope. Not only had she not imagined it, but he also had set up a significant amount of surveillance equipment all along the front wall just to the sides of the window. Google help her.

“Please don’t scream,” he requested softly. His voice was gruff and accented, and he didn’t turn away from the rifle’s sight to look at her. “Miss Smoak, I presume?” Rather than waiting for confirmation he carried on with steady, measured tones like he was talking to a frightened woodland creature. “I apologize for being here. My intelligence said you were going to be out of country for the rest of the week. I am not here to hurt you. There’s a kit just inside this room to your right. My identification is in the side zipper pocket.”

Following his directions led to Felicity rifling through the side pocket of a generic black duffel bag perched on her desk chair. She found the black leather badge case tucked between a worn leather wallet and a paperback novel with dog-eared pages. She flipped it open and blinked at the ID inside. The picture showed a man with dark eyes, a killer jawline, and a furrowed brow. Slade Wilson. “Australian Secret Intelligence?” she asked, eyebrows rising up above her glasses. “You do know that we’re in America, right? Not exactly your jurisdiction.”

Slade huffed a laugh, his focus still on the rifle’s sight. “Don’t tell anyone, Miss Smoak, but when you’re in an intelligence organization the first thing you learn is that jurisdiction doesn’t mean shit.” He paused briefly, pressing one side of a pair of headphones against his ear. After a moment he released it, shaking his head. “You should move to a better neighborhood. Half the building across the street is full of criminals.”

“I take it you’re not here to arrest anyone.” Felicity leaned against the archway, folding her arms with his badge still clenched in one hand. Didn’t this just figure.

“Unfortunately, no. One of your neighbors is in the business of trafficking young ladies.”

A chill ran up Felicity’s spine. “Is it the creepy guy with the gold tooth that uses way too much pomade? I think he’s English or something.” That guy had made her uncomfortable on more than one occasion.

“Right in one,” he confirmed. “He’s originally from Manchester. I’m not really sure where your government stands on him, but his people made the mistake of abducting a young Maori girl in New Zealand last month. She was recovered and unharmed, but it crossed a line. Her grandfather is a friend of mine.” He cleared his throat and shifted his shoulders slightly. She got the distinct impression that he might be a bit...well, sheepish. “This isn’t exactly ASIS business. I’m on my vacation time, Miss Smoak, but I promise that no harm will come to you. From me or otherwise. I’m very good at cleaning up my own messes. No authorities will even think to question you.”

Felicity’s mind ran about sixteen scenarios in the space of ten seconds. On the one hand, she was a big proponent of the idea that Murder Is Wrong. On the other hand, the guy he was targeting was clearly big in some heavy Bad Stuff and the police were either unaware or hampered by the system enough not to do anything about it. Hactivist college days aside, Felicity had spent the vast majority of her life being depressingly normal. If the way her day had started was any indication, it wasn’t exactly working for her. So, once those ten seconds had passed she felt a strangely comforting sense of calm settle over her.

“Oh, screw it,” she muttered. Tossing the badge back on his duffle she crossed the room to one of the sets of surveillance equipment. “Why is it that all government agencies insist on using such outdated tech?”

“Excuse me?”

She chattered on, adjusting cables and augmenting his tech with equipment of her own that she pulled from the cabinet beneath the television. “This stuff is practically offensive. I’ve seen first year communications students with a better set up in their dorm room cobbled together from dumpster diving parts.” Needing to adjust the code as well, she stepped over his narrow waist and scooped up the laptop he had sitting on the floor. She dropped sideways into her armchair as she settled it on her lap. “Honestly, it’s a miracle you intelligence guys ever actually gather any intel. Your system security is terrible, too, by the way. I know you already had everything open, but it looks like nothing even noticed all the stuff I have piggybacked on my router. You’re lucky I don’t have any virus plants set up.”

“I see that calling you an IT Specialist might be a bit understated, Miss Smoak.”

“Felicity, please,” she insisted, placing the laptop back where she’d found it. “If you’re here until you take care of that creepo we might as well be on a first name basis.” She pushed herself up out of the chair and padded back to the kitchen. “Look,” she called back to him while sorting through the groceries she’d left, “I’m not about to lie and say that this isn’t weird. It’s super weird. The kind of weird they put in cheesy action flicks and whatnot. But the thing is that I’ve had an amazingly bad day and this just seems like par for the course. I’m tired of fighting against things that I apparently can’t change so I’m just going to roll with it.”

Felicity kept babbling as she worked her way through putting the groceries away and getting an entire pack of chocolate chip cookie dough on trays in the oven. She told him the full story of her terrible morning break up, not pausing for long enough to see if he had any commentary. In for a penny and all that. She didn't even hold back any of the entirely not-nice things she had to say about the girl Jake was apparently replacing her with. Then, she got louder while she moved back to her bedroom to throw on her comfiest pajamas. She gave him the rundown of the hacking revenge she was going to get on Jake while she tugged her duck print cotton pants in place and tied her blonde hair up in a sloppy bun.

“Slade, isn’t it?” she asked when she finally came back into the living room with her own laptop in hand. She set the laptop on the coffee table and went back the way she came, returning seconds later with two plates of warm cookies. “Well, Slade, I hope you like sappy romance movies and listening to a bitter IT girl rant about how inaccurate they are because that’s exactly what your background noise is going to be for the next few hours.” She stepped over his legs this time, pausing to leave one of the plates on the floor by his laptop, and crawled across the coffee table to settle in the middle of the cheery yellow couch. “If you’re nice about it I might even let you pick between Chinese, pizza, and Thai when it’s time to order real food for dinner later.” Shoving a cookie in her mouth to stop the stream of babble, she finally chanced a glance at her new companion.

Slade hadn’t moved much, his focus still trained on the sight of the rifle. “I’m not picky about food,” he told her, and she could see the barest hint of a smirk on the profile of his face. “Though I am going to insist that you let me pay for dinner.” Her eyebrows shot up again, and a retort was on the tip of her tongue, but he beat her to it. “For what it’s worth, Felicity,” and, _oh_ , her name had no right to sound that good in his voice, “your ex-boyfriend is a moron.”

Well. Maybe the day wasn’t going to end up being all that bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, I have no idea how computer hacking and surveillance equipment work. All my technobabble is either made up or learned from television.


End file.
